


Limits By Moonlight

by tielan



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Acceptance, Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Psy-Changeling (Singh), Alternate Universe - Psychics/Psionics, Alternate Universe - Werecreatures, Community: mcuflashmeme, F/M, Moonlight
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-22
Updated: 2016-05-22
Packaged: 2018-06-09 21:56:46
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,425
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6924970
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tielan/pseuds/tielan
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>She had become complacent and, as all Arrows were taught, complacency killed. And her death was looking down at her, deep suspicion lingering in eyes of blue fire.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Limits By Moonlight

**Author's Note:**

> This is a 'several months later' fic from my MCU Psy-Changeling fic "[The Gathering Clouds](http://archiveofourown.org/works/714702)" which I've never managed to write the next section of. One more eternal WIP for the list, I fear...
> 
> Also for the MCU Flashmeme challenge ' _A story set at a full moon._ '

Bright moonlight spilled across the pristine snow, limning the world in cool shades of blue, and flattening the shadows in the forest as Maria ran past them, following the Changeling alpha who loped ahead of her in the night.

Once, Maria would have slipped through the deepest shadows, blurring herself as she went so as to evade notice from people and wild creature alike. Once, she would have trod carefully through pack territory, on the lookout for traps and danger. Once, she might have followed and tracked a Changeling alpha to his death, ordered to do so for the safety and security of the Psy race.

Once, but not any more.

The air was sharp and cold in her lungs, but she drew even, steady breaths as she kept pace with the man who jogged along without looking behind at her, trusting her to keep up with him.

It wasn’t until he paused by a marker denoting the outer reaches of the Territory and turned to look at her, blue eyes gleaming predatory in the moonlight, that Maria realised how far they’d come – and how fast.

“You kept up.”

She looked Steve Rogers in the eye. “A mistake.”

His breath whuffed from the powerful chest. “For a Psy? Yeah.” He lunged at her, almost faster than she could track. She could have fought him, could maybe have evaded, but it wasn’t just her life in his hands.

As the alpha of the Howling Commando Changeling pack, he had the power to expel not only her, but Phil and the nine children who Maria had been ordered to terminate by the Psy Council – and disobeyed, bringing them to safety in Howling Commando territory.

As safe as they could be among Changelings with no reason to love the Psy.

As his hands closed about her wrists, his weight and strength shoving her back up against the giant trunk of a nearby pine, Maria fought the instinct to lash out with her telekinesis. She had known this day might come; known that her presence in the pack was tolerated, but not accepted or acceptable.

She had become complacent and, as all Arrows were taught, complacency killed.

And her death was looking down at her, deep suspicion lingering in eyes of blue fire.

“You can keep up with a Changeling alpha, fix a wound that an M-Psy couldn’t have healed.” He caged her with his body right up against hers, so close that the heat pouring off him near-seared her skin as his eyes searched her face. “You worked for the Council – high up enough that you were given a great deal of freedom – but you exiled yourself for nine kids and a former teacher. You don’t pick fights or make challenges, but every dominant in the pack wants to try themselves against you. And you should be fighting me right now with everything in you, but you’re just standing there, waiting for me to strike the killing blow.”

She held his gaze, weathering the dominance that made her want to drop her eyes before him. “Why don’t you?”

Rogers let her go, almost shoving her into the tree as he stepped back. Bright moonlight washed across the planes of his face, sharpening his features, and silvering his hair. “Because you’ve never made a move against the Pack and so far as I can tell, you won’t as long as Coulson and the kids are safe.”

“An accurate estimation.”

He laughed, fierce and bitter. “And that’s all you have to say?”

“It’s not—” Maria cut herself off, fighting the compulsions in her – to teleport away, to avoid answering the questions that lay beneath his statements, to remain Silent in the Protocol which had been taught her from the day her father relinquished a six-year old girl to the Council structure. “I was trained to be like this - to be contained, to keep secrets.”

“The Council’s secrets?”

“And my own.” She breathed through the warning pressures in her skull. “I was—In the Psy-net, I was an operative. Paramilitary.”

His breath hissed out. “An assassin?”

“Yes.”

“Changelings? Humans?” Then he shook his head, divining the answer without needing to be told. “Psy. You hunted your own people?”

“Silence and the Protocol saved the Psy,” Maria told him. “You know the statistics.”

“I know the lies they tell us,” Rogers said, his hands on his hips as he faced her. “Psychosis down, mental instability down, no more killers, no more violence, no more cruelty.”

“They’re not entirely lies.” Her heartbeat was steady in her breast, her breathing perfectly even, and yet something twinged in her head – a warning against what she was about to reveal. “I was a killer at six years old – an elderly neighbour who bore the brunt of my telekinesis in a childish tantrum. The Council took me and taught me to be Silent, to control my abilities by ceasing to feel emotion.”

“And then they made a killer out of you.”

“I was already a killer.”

“You were a child!” The defence was unexpected; although, on consideration, it shouldn’t have been. Changelings were protective of the young. “Did you plan to kill your neighbour?”

“The result was the same; his death. And,” she hesitated, reluctant to admit this before him – what would he understand of monsters? But he had taken her in with Phil and the children when he could have had her executed – should have, for the safety of his pack, so she continued, “I’ve killed others since then.”

His expression didn’t change. “Under orders?”

“Yes.”

“Since you came to the Howling Commandos?”

“There is no-one to give me such orders.”

“And if there were?”

She stared at him, processing the question and what it might mean. “You don’t want or need an assassin.”

“No.” One side of his mouth curved in a sardonic twist. “I’m asking what you would do if you were given an order now?”

“You would never ask it. Neither would Phil.”

“Answer the damn question, Maria!”

She didn’t understand his anger; but she answered all the same. “If I were given an order to kill someone, I would judge why the order was given. I would consider whether doing so would endanger Phil and the children – whether following it would endanger the pack.”

“And if you thought it did?”

“I would disobey.”

“Because of Coulson and the kids.”

“Yes.”

Rogers’ gaze was wary and thoughtful as he watched her, his eyes almost glowing in the darkness. Suddenly, Maria understood the phrase she’d heard in the den: _his wolf is close to the surface_. The shift in his stance, in his expression was subtle but telling. “I wonder,” he murmured as these thoughts flew through her head, “is there anything you _wouldn’t_ do for them?”

One moment, Maria was opening her mouth to reply. The next, his body was pressing hers into the tree, his hands were on her neck, cupping her cheek, and his mouth was on hers, hot and open.

Something in her _yearned_ , an emptiness gaping wide – something primal, buried deeper than the training they’d given her through the years. Sensation crawled through her, a momentary wave of something soft and aching, hungry as fire, sharp as as blade. Then pain exploded in her skull, tendrils of agony lashing out through her brain, squeezing her thoughts into bloody fragments.

She shoved Rogers away with her telekinesis, pushing him back through the snow and holding him at bay. And then tensed as his growl filled the air around them. It took her a moment to realise that he wasn’t closing in on her, wasn’t doing anything other than growling, his gaze fixed on the side of her throat—

Blood stained the air, a sharp sting in her nostrils, in her flesh. His claws had drawn blood as she’d thrust him away from her. And Rogers was reacting to it, thinking he’d injured her.

“It’s a superficial wound,” she said. Her body was already healing it, knitting the flesh together with her particular micro-telekinetic skill as the tendrils of pain that had wrapped themselves around her faded in the cool. “An accident.”

His eyes narrowed as he stared at her. “And this?” He waved one arm at the glade beyond them. “Was this an accident, too?”

Maria looked around her. Between them the snow was smooth, albeit marked by his footsteps and hers, but beyond him, the once-pristine snow was churned and muddy, as though a pack of Changelings had romped through it – or a telekinetic had thrust her gift through the frozen earth in a brutal, visual display of her loss of control.

If she could have shivered in her Silence, she would have.

 _This_ was the monster inside of her, leashed by the Protocols and the Silence. This was the danger that lurked in her kind – and why she’d held off from the Changelings, doing only what she had to, letting them in only so far.

“Silence,” she told him, quiet and cold, “is what keeps me from indiscriminate killing.”

Rogers turned back from the damage, his gaze sharp and wary. “As compared to discriminate killing?”

Maria didn’t answer that.

His eyes searched her face, the unearthly blue intent on an answer he didn’t find, “Have you done this before?”

“Not since I was a child.”

A flicker of amusement. “I was talking about the kiss.”

“Psy do not encourage physical contact.”

“But you let the pups touch you and never did this.” Rogers waved one hand at the churned and broken ground around them. “So you _do_ have limits.”

Maria felt the tension in the moment. A limit to her patience meant a limit to his patience. That meant her days were numbered. The alpha of the Howling Commandos would neither tolerate nor sanction a killer like her among his people – and she knew too much about the pack as it was, they’d never cut her free.

“What will you do?”

“What I _want_ to do is push those limits.” His mouth curved in a smile that held no amusement as he watched her take a moment to understand what he was saying.

If her training had allowed her to catch her breath, she might have. As it was, a tightness tingled in her skull – the prescient warning of potential pain. Maria ignored it, resolute and cold. “That makes no sense to a Psy.”

“It doesn’t make any sense to a Changeling, either. But there it is.” Wry humour softened the tones of his voice, eased the sharp planes of his face. “All right, Maria. I won’t push those limits.”

“But?”

“But you’re not going to drift along the edge of the pack anymore. No more fighting with the dominants trying to prove themselves, no more skulking along the edges of the Pack. And you come clean about what you can do. How you did _this_. ” He indicates the churned moonlit snow either side of them. “How you healed Tony.”

“I’m surprised you haven’t asked Fury.”

“I did. He keeps his secrets even closer than you do.” Another humourless smile. “And Barton and Romanoff won’t tell what Fury’s forbidden, while Coulson simply says it’s your secrets at stake and he has no right to reveal them.”

Maria looked him in the eye and opened up a wound in her cheek, across the cheekbone, deep enough to drip blood. “I’m a telekinetic, specialisation TK-Cell. TK-Cell means that, apart from the standard telekinetic abilities, my gift operates on a cellular level – including human tissue.”

She didn’t notice the blood dripping down her cheek – it would stop in a moment as her ability knit her flesh back together, seamlessly healing up until not even a scar remained.

“That was what you did with Tony’s wound.” Rogers’ eyes focused on her cheek, which had already ceased to sting in the cool night air. “Coulson said you expended so much energy you burned yourself out.”

“A customary side-effect of the overuse of an ability. It was expected.”

“By you and Phil, not by anyone else. That kind of secrecy stops now. If we don’t know what you’re capable of and what might happen to you when you do it – then we can’t protect you.”

“And you intend to protect us?”

“I was thinking that I intend for you to protect the pack.” His smile seemed to indicate amusement at the thought. “Unfortunately, given all the fights you’ve won and your dominance levels, you’re too strong to be anything but a lieutenant.”

“Your other lieutenants will never accept me.”

“Some of them already have – Carol and Bruce and Thor, for starters. The rest? After you healed Tony? They won’t ask why.” He stepped in, as close as he’d been before, and she watched him warily, but didn’t try to evade. “Is that a no?”

“It’s a ‘you don’t know what you’re in for.’”

“But not a no.”

There was too much at stake for her to refuse; Phil and the children, Nick and Clint and Natasha... And that wasn’t even counting the nascent tendril of _something_ that insisted this was where she belonged, that the Howling Commandos were worthy of her loyalty as the Psy Council had not been.

“No,” she said, looking up at him in challenge. “That’s not a no.”

This time, the smile was real – and dangerously edged. “Give me your hand. I’d better not try for your throat again. You might kill me, and then where would we be?”

Maria held out her hand, palm down, then paused as he gripped her wrist with clawed fingers, scoring deep enough to draw blood. Then he closed his hand into a fist, and she saw more blood drip down his fingers. The psychic resonances in her mind shifted, drawing something within her taut and ready for action, although when she ran a psychic check, the ShieldNet seemed as usual.

And Rogers was watching her from mere feet away, his gaze intent and intense, as though he could read her through the expressionlessness that had been trained into her as a child. His gaze dropped to her mouth, and Maria saw the thought that flickered through him, the impulse that he restrained.

_I won’t push those limits._

He didn’t understand – couldn’t understand – that the impulses he and the rest of the Pack indulged in without thought, as a celebration of their Changeling natures, were capable of physically destroying her.

He would learn.

In the meantime, it seemed Maria had taken on a new allegiance.

“Welcome to the Howling Commandos,” said Steve Rogers quietly.

 


End file.
